Lecture 1 Biology is the study of life The Concept of Life

“What is life?” Only three simple words, and yet

out of them spins a universe of questions that are
A. Concept and Manifestations of Life no less challenging. What precisely is it that
B. Methods in the Study of Biology separates the animate from the inanimate? What
C. Origin of Life are the basic ingredients of life? Where did life first
stir? How did the first organisms evolve? Is there
life everywhere? To what extent is life scattered
This image cannot currently be display ed.
across the cosmos? If other kinds of creatures do
exist on exoplanets, are they as intelligent as we
are, or even more so?

- J. Craig Venter, Life at the Speed of Light (2013)

2

The Concept of Life Manifestations and Characteristics of Life 1. Organization and Order

life is a particular set of processes that living things have a complex organization
result from the organization of matter

life resists a
simple, one-
sentence
definition

yet we can
recognize life
by what living
things do

2. Metabolism and Homeostasis

2. Metabolism and Homeostasis

characteristics energy utilization

of life emerge
from an organisms
organism’s take in
organization energy and
transform it to
do work Homeostasis-Greek
words"same" and
"steady," refers to
any process that
living things use to
actively maintain
fairly stable
conditions
necessary for
survival.
 3. Reproduction 4. Growth and Development 5. Irritability and movement

organisms produce their own kind heritable programs (DNA) direct pattern of capable of response to environmental stimulus
growth and development

6. Variation, change, and evolution 6. Variation, change, and evolution

This image cannot currently be display ed.

Scientific Method

African wild Coyote Fox Wolf Jackal

dog

Thousands to
millions of years
of natural selection

Ancestral canine

20

SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY
The Nature of Science The Nature of Science
• Deductive Reasoning • Inductive Reasoning
– Examining individual cases by applying – Discovering general principles through
accepted general principles. examination of specific cases.

Copyright © McGraw-Hill Companies Permission

required for reproduction or display
21 22 23
Copyright © McGraw-Hill Companies Permission
required for reproduction or display
 Scientific Process
• Observation - Careful observation of a
process or phenomenon
• Hypothesis - Guess concerning the
observation
– May generate multiple hypotheses.
• Prediction - Expected consequences of a
correct hypothesis
Scientific Process
• Experiment - Test of a hypothesis
– Controlled Experiment - All factors influencing
the experiment (controls) must be kept
constant.
• Conclusion - Draw a conclusion from the
results
– Reject or fail to reject hypothesis
Theory and Certainty
• Theory - set of hypotheses that have been
thoroughly tested over time, and generally
accepted by the scientific community
– acceptance is always provisional
• to the general public a theory is synonymous with
a guess due to lack of knowledge

24 25 26

Theories on the origin of life

Limitations of Science
Scientific study is limited to area that can
be observed and measured
o cannot be used to address all questions
o bound by practical limits
- temporal and spatial considerations
Biological Methods
techniques or procedures that are used to 1. Spontaneous Generation Theory
study living things
2. Biogenesis
include experimental and computational 3. Special Creation
methods, approaches, protocols and tools
4. Biogeochemical Theories
for biological research
5. Interplanetary or Cosmozoic Theory

27 28

1. Spontaneous Generation 1. Spontaneous Generation 1. Spontaneous Generation

In 1668, Francesco Redi made a simple In 1862, Louis

living organisms could develop
experiment to demonstrate that maggots Pasteur did
spontaneously from nonliving matter
do not arise spontaneously from decaying experiments
from the time of the Greeks until the 19th matter. which provided
century it was common “knowledge” that the final
life could arise from nonliving matter argument to
decaying meat
Aristotle (384 – 322 BC) thought that disprove the
some of the simpler invertebrates could theory
arise by spontaneous generation
maggots
decaying meat
31 34
 Pasteur 2. Biogenesis 3. Special Creation
conducted broth
experiments that
proposed by Rudolf Virchow in the 1850s states that life on earth was created by
rejected the idea
of spontaneous some supernatural force or being
generation living organisms whether simple or
complex can arise only from preexisting each species represented a separate act
living organisms of creation
God said, “Let the land produce
doesn’t answer the question how life
vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees
began on earth
on the land that bear fruit with seed in it,
according to their various kinds.” And it
was so. Gen 1:11
35 36 37
Copyright © 2002 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Benjamin Cummings

3. Special Creation 4. Biogeochemical Theory In the 1920’s, A.I. Oparin and J.B.S.
Haldane independently postulated that
based on faith life may have evolved from inorganic matter conditions on the early Earth favored the
traces possible events of the formation of synthesis of organic compounds from
cannot be subjected to scientific inquiry or biomolecules under primitive earth inorganic precursors.
be tested in any lab conditions to the evolution of the cell and
various cell processes The reducing environment in the early
most scientists favor the hypothesis that life atmosphere would have promoted the
on Earth developed from nonliving materials joining of simple molecules to form more
that became ordered into aggregates that complex ones.
were capable of self-replication and
metabolism
38 43
Copyright © 2002 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Benjamin Cummings

In 1953, Stanley Miller and Harold Urey major debates also concern where life evolved 5. Interplanetary or Cosmozoic Theory
tested the Oparin-Haldane hypothesis - shallow water or moist sediments
by creating, in the laboratory, the - deep sea vents life originated on a distant planet
conditions that
the most important reason for invoking an
had been postulated extraterrestrial origin for life, probably in a
for early Earth. hydrothermal habitat, is that such an origin
provides a greater timespan for early
evolution than has been available on Earth
Panspermia is applied to the possible
dispersion of life throughout the galaxy
Directed panspermia describes the deliberate
seeding of life on Earth by intelligent beings
44 46
Copyright © 2002 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Benjamin Cummings Copyright © 2002 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Benjamin Cummings